“Don't touch her.”
The words were quiet.
But every man wearing an Iron Ravens vest stopped.
Hammer kept his arm resting on the table. His massive hand remained open, palm upward, as he looked toward the terrified child.
“She's not hurting me,” he said.
The biker stared.
“But she's—”
“I know what she's doing.”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then a woman rushed toward them from the hospital doors.
“LUCY!”
Mara Bennett was forty-two, with shoulder-length brown hair, tired green eyes, and the desperate expression of someone who had spent too many months expecting something terrible to happen.
She wore a cream cardigan over a forest-green blouse and carried a small handbag clutched so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.
“Lucy, sweetheart, come here!”
The little girl recoiled.
“No!”
Mara stopped.
“It's Aunt Mara. You're safe.”
Lucy looked toward the enormous biker.
Then toward his arm.
Her breathing became faster.
“The birds,” she whispered.
Mara's face crumpled.
She understood immediately.
Four months earlier, Lucy had witnessed something no child should have seen. Since that night, certain sounds, smells, and images had sent her into a panic so severe that she sometimes couldn't remember where she was.
One of those images was a raven tattoo.
Not every tattoo.
Not every motorcycle.
A particular black bird, inked near a man's wrist.
A bird Lucy said had been attached to the hand that hurt her mother.
Mara looked toward Hammer's arm.
Her stomach tightened.
“Oh, God.”
Hammer raised his eyes.
He recognized the terror in the woman's face.
But before he could speak, Lucy seized another handful of mud from the planter beside the table and pushed it across his wrist.
“Now you can't hurt anybody,” she whispered.
Hammer felt something inside his chest collapse.
He lowered his head.
For a long moment, his eyes remained fixed on the little girl's trembling hands.
Then he answered.
“No, sweetheart. I'm not going to hurt anybody.”
Lucy stared at him suspiciously.
His enormous hand was almost twice the size of hers. Dark ink covered his knuckles, wrist, and forearm. There were old scars across his fingers from decades of motorcycle repairs, metalwork, and accidents he'd survived when he was young enough to believe he couldn't be seriously injured.
Yet he hadn't raised one finger against her.
Mara moved closer.
“Lucy, can you look at me?”
The girl didn't answer.